Mozilla Labs To Bring Address Book To Firefox

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "Mozilla has announced the availability of an experimental new add-on for Firefox that is designed to import information about the user's contacts from a variety of Web services and other sources. The add-on makes contact details easily accessible to the user and can also selectively supply it to remote Web applications. ... After the add-on has imported and indexed the user's contact data, it becomes available to the user through an integrated contact management tool that functions like an address book. One of Mozilla's first experiments is an autocompletion feature that allows users to select a contact when they are typing an e-mail address into a Web form. ... To make the browser's contact database accessible to Web applications, the add-on uses the W3C Contacts API specification."

Um, why?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

First of all, when I'm filling out a web form I'm *never* putting somebody else's information into it -- it's always my own. Second of all... actually, there is no second of all. When I'm using Firefox for email, it's just my front-end to GMail or other webmail which already has an address book. I'm not a big fan of the "well, I don't see a need therefore nobody should" school of thought; so I'd love to hear about use cases where this functionality is actually meeting some need not already handled more appropriately elsewhere.

Re:Danger... keep that door locked.

[geminidomino]

File->Send link

Opens your mail client, badda-bing. This is just more mozilla Kitchen-Sinking.

Re:Um, why?

[Thinboy00]

A lot of "social networking" websites ask for your password to your email so they can import your contacts. If the browser could (semi-)automagically give it that info, you'd close a huge security gap...

Re:Um, why?

[ucblockhead]

Given that I always say NO GODDAMNIT NO NO NO NO! to those requests because I don't want some idiot social networking fuckhead marketer spamming all my contacts, saying "we'll just do it automagically" fills me with terror.

Re:Great, another address book to get F*$ked up sy

[Dr. Evil]

'Sync'ing is the wrong solution for calendars, email and contacts. The right solution is to read all sources and present them simultaneously.

Re:We already have Thunderbird why this?

[TheReal_sabret00the]

I don't use Thunderbird, I use Yahoo and Gmail. And while I don't generally trust websites with my contacts book, I am more than happy to let them search my Twitter to see if I have friends on the site, this experiment is simply an extension/road to that.

Forget an Address Book in Firefox

[rshol]

That's stupid. But, give us an address book in Thunderbird that will sync seamlessly with Gmail and I'd be deliriously happy.